From music to Saturn’s moon: Joey Pasterski, Ph.D., brings his creative passion to STEM
During this conversation, Pasterski talks to host Michael Holtz about why studying Titan is important, how the moon is like a bizarro earth, and how the trajectory of his life changed when he discovered a love for science.
Center: Goddard Space Flight Center
It’s easy to come to the conclusion that STEM and the arts are at odds. One is about creativity and emotion, while the other is about logic and methodology.
Joey Pasterski, Ph.D., a researcher in the NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, believes that the arts and sciences are more intertwined than many people realize.
“I think that science is itself very creative,” said Pasterski in a recent interview for Further Together, the ORAU Podcast. “I think that in order to take a lot of data and see what's important and synthesize those things out in your mind and your every day, it's very similar to seeing a landscape and finding the picture in it or hearing a million chords and finding the song. A lot of people who are in the arts think that they can't do science or that they are not science brained. I used to be one of those people and I now fully push against that because I think that anyone can apply themselves to science and learn the general nomenclature.”
Pasterski explained that he was originally incredibly reluctant to engage with science, taking as many arts and music courses as he could when he was in community college. It wasn’t until he returned to school in his late twenties, at the University of Illinois, that he fell in love with the field.
“I realized that I had been missing out on this very beautiful world in the more deep ways, because in geology you really connect with not just the beauty of a rock, but you understand where that rock came from, which makes you understand the history of the earth and the history of life on earth, which then when you start to delve deeper, really connects pretty beautifully to outer space,” explained Pasterski. “I came to NASA through geology, but just by happenstance happened to go to a college that had a good geology department and a professor that was very enthusiastic about space. Yeah, it was pretty much by happenstance, but I can't imagine what else I'd rather be doing at this point.”
Pasterski’s research focuses on laser desorption mass spectrometry for the Dragonfly Mission, which will go to Saturn’s moon Titan.
“The Dragonfly Mission is going to use laser desorption mass spectrometry specifically to sample diverse organic matter that's across the surface of Titan and to characterize that organic matter,” said Pasterski. “One of my research focuses is to analyze analogs of the organic matter on Titan using similar instruments that will actually fly on the lander in order to understand what that signal on Titan is actually going to look like.”
Pasterski explained that Titan is an important celestial body to research because while it looks like Earth, with sand dunes, rain, lakes and snow, these features are made from different elements than their Earth counterparts. Titan sand dunes are not made of the same material as the sand on Earth. Rather than water falling from the sky on Titan, it rains methane and ethane.
“One of the big questions for the Dragonfly Mission is: when we go to Titan, what kind of prebiotic chemistry is there and how far does that prebiotic chemistry go, potentially in the absence of life?” Pasterski continued. “If there is life, we wouldn't be able to detect it, but even if there is no life, really, how far does that prebiotic chemistry go in such an alien world?”
The differences between Titan and Earth may seem as vast as the differences between music and science, but Pasterski explained that many of his colleagues are also musicians, bringing their creative joy to the lab and breathing their own creative sprits into their work. Pasterski said that these people make the lab a friendly, collaborative space, filled with music, fun and joy.